The present invention relates to apparatus and method of vehicle safety support, and more particularly, to a vehicle safety support apparatus and method which is capable of supporting the safety of a driver using an autonomous driving system.
In general, a vehicle provides movement convenience and time efficiency to people, but a driver may cause much damage to surrounding people as well as the driver, due to the driver's carelessness. Therefore, attention is required for using the vehicle. In particular, the recent technological convergence between vehicles and ICT (Information & Communication Technology) has made the vehicles intelligent and advanced. Thus, a safe driving support system installed in each vehicle recognizes a dangerous situation, and informs a driver of the dangerous situation.
The conventional safe driving support system in the vehicle recognizes the dangerous situation mainly by collecting information through external sensors such as a radar and camera and determining an accident risk such as a lane departure or collision. Furthermore, the safe driving support system informs the driver of the dangerous situation by displaying the dangerous situation on a display device (for example, flickering a warning light) or outputting a voice. However, the voice outputted by the safe driving support system may be buried in noise caused by high-speed driving, or the warning light may not be visually and auditorily recognized when the driver keeps eyes forward while focusing his attention on the driving or dozes off at the wheel.
The research of IIHS in the US has also concluded that the lane departure warning and assist system is not enough to prevent a road departure accident or the like.
The related art is disclosed in Korean Patent Registration No. 10-0282903 published on Dec. 2, 2000.
As described above, the conventional safety support systems provide the function of warning a driver of drowsy driving, careless driving or collision risk. However, when the driver does not respond to the warning or cannot normally perform driving, the possibility that an accident will occur inevitably increases.